“This is war, and we’re strong, and we’re here,” Lucy Madeline told Honey Harris on KBAC Radio this morning. “We’re going to fight this, even if the odds feel like they’re against us.” Madeline appeared with our director, Frank Rose, to promote the debut performance of the Victory Grrrls collective. The interdisciplinary group, comprising Madeline, Niomi Fawn and Thais Mather, will take part in a weekend of feminist action at form & concept.

Along with collecting hair, Lucy also experimented with saving her menstrual blood and carrying it around in a jar. “I made a very specific decision not to paint with it,” she said. “I showed it to strangers, though never without their consent, and observed their reactions. It was a performance.” The blood collection was done in the same spirit as saving hair. By doing so, Lucy hoped to better understand the body’s cycles and determine if, in the act of collection, she’d be closer to the time that had passed, and to her matrilineal heritage. When Lucy first asked her grandmother if she could have some of her hair, she discovered that unbeknownst to her, her grandmother had been saving her hair since the ’60s. “She’s Southern,” Lucy explained. “It’s very much a Victorian thing.”

In conjunction with today’s One Billion Rising events, SFUAD students Lucy Madeline and Maddi Knox performed Women Braiding Their Hair Together—a performance piece and video installation where both women braided one another’s hair as an expression of female solidarity.

The press release describes the symbolic significance of hair and of braiding: “Hair references prosperity, strength, and social status.”